For a company that once told us backwards compatibility wasn’t a viable business model, Sony is really riding the retro release gravy train hard right now. And don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for that because many of the games they’re making available to this generation are tried and true classics that deserve to be played without having to search far and wide for physical copies that will work on aging legacy hardware where some may not even have the ability to save their progress due to a lack of peripherals. Or worse, fly to the internet’s many auction houses to pay inflated prices. Sony’s really gearing up for more greatness with the discovery that the ESRB rated a number of fantastic games from the PS2 generation for the Playstation 4 today. Have a look at this screen shot from their website to see why we’re bringing it up.
There are a lot of notable titles on this list, such as Ape Escape 3, Siren and Okage: Shadow King but the standout here has to be Wild Arms 3, a game that was originally released in 2002 and was the first iteration of the series on the Playstation 2 console. By the time it was on shelves in North America, the series no longer had quite the cache of the first entry in the series, which pushed boundaries and gave us a whole new kind of role playing experience from Japan in 1996. Still, I was a fan and I’m sure Sony thinks many other people out there are willing to give Wild Arms 3 a chance in virtual format. Let’s hope that this leads to eventual interest in a full blown revival of the series at long last!
